Ready to take pathology to the next level? Digital slides are now taking the place of glass ones. Receive diagnosis faster to help your patients receive the right treatment sooner.
If you want to learn the ins and outs of digital pathology, we’ve got you covered. Continue reading for everything you need to know to get you started.
Digital Pathology – What Is It?
The study of pathology is believed to date back to the Ancient Greeks. It is the study of tissue or bodily fluids including blood and urine. We use the expertise of a pathologist to understand and diagnose the cause of a disease or ailment.
Digital pathology helps you share, manage and interpret this information in a quick and easy way. Using a scanning device, glass slides are captured and turned into digital slides that are much easier to view and organize. This is called whole slide imaging (WSI) technology that works in conjunction with software applications.
You can view digital slides on a computer screen or mobile device. This makes it fast and easy to review and share glass slides over networks using digital pathology software applications. Meaning you can reach specialists outside of your facility much faster leading to sooner treatment.
The digital slides are high-resolution digital images. They offer magnification that is comparable to a microscope! So that details are not lost in the transferring of slides from glass to digital.
How Can It Benefit Pathologists?
Digital pathology has been around for 100 years. It started with the capturing of images from a microscope onto photographic plates. Just within the past decade, we’ve seen a true digital transformation. We are completely moving away from analog to a completely electronic platform.
Using digital pathology, you are able to receive slides much faster and distribute them to the appropriate people with ease. This means you can increase productivity without having to wait for physical slides to be sent.
There’s also high-speed networking that makes it easier to set up a complete pathology workflow. This research will include CAD or computerized aided diagnosis to streamline processes further.
Analog vs. Digital Pathology
In the world of pathology, there’s no way that glass slides can be removed from the equation completely. That’s because pathology starts with collected tissue. That means glass slides are here to stay even if they are transferred to a digital scan later on.
Digital is simply a way for pathologists to improve their processes in both quality and efficiency. In today’s world, there is a shortage of pathologists meaning it’s important now more than ever to adopt this new digital method.
With digital pathology, we are finding a decrease in errors including breakage and misidentification. There is also the ability to zoom in for better views of the sample. Including the option for teams to leave annotations on the slides for easy collaborations.
Also, consider the increase in data storage that can help with long-term analytics. Plus, the ability to access many prior cases at your fingertips. Algorithms are being used to analyze slides. These instantly provide more objective and accurate insights than microscopy.
All of these benefits and more lead to a high quality of results.
Reap the Rewards of Digital Technology
The innovation of Digital Pathology is allowing those who adopt it to improve their workflows, expand their reach, and become more specialized than ever.
Change can be tough especially when switching over from a mainly analog system. However, the long term benefits of this are undeniable. Now that you understand digital pathology, you’re ready to take the next steps to adopt it in your facility.
For more information on digital pathology, contact us today.
